A communication system may be seen as a facility that enables communication sessions between two or more nodes such as fixed or mobile communication devices, access points such as nodes, base stations, servers, hosts, machine type servers, routers, and so on. A communication system and compatible communicating devices typically operate in accordance with a given standard or specification which sets out what the various entities associated with the system are permitted to do and how that should be achieved. For example, the standards, specifications and related protocols may define the manner how communication devices shall communicate with the access points, how various aspects of the communications shall be implemented and how the devices and functionalities thereof shall be configured.
An example of cellular communication systems is an architecture that is being standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). A recent development in this field is often referred to as the long-term evolution (LTE) or long-term evolution advanced (LTE advanced) of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) radio-access technology. In LTE base stations providing the cells are commonly referred to as enhanced NodeBs (eNB). An eNB may provide coverage for an entire cell or similar radio service area.
A user may access the communication system by means of an appropriate communication device. A communication device of a user is often referred to as user device (UE), user device or terminal. A communication device is provided with an appropriate signal receiving and transmitting arrangement for enabling communications with other parties. In wireless systems a communication device typically provides a transceiver station that may communicate with another communication device such as e.g. a base station. A communication device such as a user device (UE) may access a carrier provided by a base station, and transmit and/or receive on the carrier.
Capacity of a communication system may be improved by providing network densification—increasing a number of network nodes and decreasing an average distance between user equipment and network nodes. One method of increasing densification of a network is to provide smaller nodes (for example low power nodes) under the control of more powerful macro nodes. The smaller nodes may provide the network with an increased traffic capacity while the macro nodes may provide service availability for the coverage area.
In dual connectivity, a user equipment may operate in a system having both master nodes and secondary nodes and may carry out simultaneous (dual) communication with a master and a secondary node. The functionality of the master and secondary nodes may be arranged in different ways, for example control signalling may be carried out through the master node while data signalling may be carried out through the secondary node and/or uplink and downlink connectivity may be separated between the master and secondary node.
When a secondary node is added to the user equipment, the user equipment may start to monitor or listen for transmissions from the secondary node. In some cases this may lead to the extra use of resources such as power by the user equipment.